Museum board members resign amid legal dispute with city

Three members of the History Museum of Mobile’s Board of Directors resigned in protest after a meeting Oct. 6, when the board voted to hire an attorney to fight the city for financial information and for the waving of the facility’s admission fee.

David Smithweck, Wayne Sirmon and Lisa Young each cited a strained relationship between the board and the city as one of the reasons for their resignations.

Young, whose second four-year term ends in December, said she was willing to work with the city on issues, especially since the museum is a city department. She said other members weren’t as amenable.

“I was willing to listen to facts and help the museum achieve what it wanted to achieve,” she said. “It got to the point where people were being disrespectful and I didn’t want to be in a disrespectful situation.”

A total of five of the board’s 21 members have recently resigned because of the board’s increasingly distanced relationship from the city, Chief of Staff Colby Cooper said in an email Thursday.

Former Chairman Wayne Sirmon said the relationship between the city and the board has been frosty since a January dispute over fundraising responsibility. More recently, however, the board and city have been at odds over what the board views as the city refusing to allow its trustees to see bank statements and other financial documents, he said.

Sirmon said the city has offered the board electronic copies of the documents, but members have insisted on the originals. The dispute has gotten so bad that during its Oct. 6 meeting, the board hired attorney Clay Rossi of Burns, Cunningham and Mackey, to explore its options.

The hiring of Rossi is what Smithweck said compelled him to resign after the meeting.

“For the first time in 49 years, an adversarial relationship exists between the History Museum of Mobile and its Board of Directors,” he said in a statement. “This was created by the board hiring an attorney and the board’s inability to govern themselves within their own bylaws. The situation, however, will not affect the museum’s function to preserve and present Mobile’s history through magnificent exhibits, such as the Ark of India.”

The board of the History Museum of Mobile is in a legal dispute with the city over its financial responsibilities.

Rossi wrote a letter to the administration the he was hired requesting financial records, including “any and all banking statements and checkbook registers.”

In the letter, Rossi argues that according to city ordinance, the board has “full power and authority to control the expenditure of all funds received for the operation” of the museum.

Smithweck, Sirmon and the city see it differently, as the museum has been a city department since 2006. Cooper described the board as “advisory and fundraising in nature.”

Current Board Chairman Greg Reynolds disagrees, citing city code.

“We are not an advisory board,” Reynolds said. “We do have full power as an administrative board.”

Reynolds added that the board has been asking for the financial documents since June and has not received them.

Smithweck said board members are looking at old ordinances from back when the museum was an agency of the city and city code has since changed.

“The city owns the facility and everything in it,” Smithweck said. “The board thinks it owns everything in there, but it doesn’t. The board is working off an ordinance from 1963, but it has since been changed.”

Rossi also argued that he board was harmed when Stimpson made the announcement earlier this month that admission to the museum would be free, starting with the Ark of India exhibit. Rossi wrote that the museum generates income through admission and through memberships, which already make admission free.

“The ‘free admission’ policy is not only injurious to the museum’s operations but the grounds of the mayor’s authority are clouded at best,” Rossi wrote.

Rossi requested city legal staff to provide any documentation that suggests Stimpson has the power to waive admission to the museum.

Cooper said Stimpson does indeed have the authority to make admission free.

“The mayor made an executive decision within his administrative purview to cancel admission fees because, like other great museums across our nation, he wanted to give our citizens and guests a chance to explore our city’s history for free,” Cooper wrote.

Admission revenue over the last five years has varied from a high of $73,207 in 2009 to a low of $41,436 in 2011. Last year, admission brought in $54,315.

“The city has not received these funds,” Cooper wrote. “They have been going to the board. We are addressing whether this was permissible, given they do not own the land, the building, nor do they hold a lease.”

Smithweck said the museum makes the bulk of its admission revenue from memberships and that members won’t be deterred by the city allowing free admission.

“People don’t get memberships to get into the museum for free,” Smithweck said. “That’s not the primary reason for memberships.”

For additional reporting on this story, pick up the issue of Lagniappe hitting stands Oct. 22.

About The Author

Dale Liesch has been a reporter at Lagniappe since February 2014. He covers all aspects of the city of Mobile, including the mayor, city council, the Mobile Housing Board of Commissioners, GulfQuest National Maritime Museum of the Gulf of Mexico and others. He studied journalism at The University of Alabama and actually graduated in 2007.
He came to Lagniappe, after several years in the newspaper industry. He achieved the position of news editor at The Alexander City Outlook before moving to Virginia and then subsequently moving back a few years later. He has a number of Alabama and Virginia Press association awards to his name.
He grew up in the wilderness of Baldwin County, among several different varieties of animals including: dogs, cats, ducks, chickens, a horse and an angry goat. He now lives in Midtown Mobile with his wife, Hillary, and daughter, Joan. The family currently has no goats, angry or otherwise, but is ruled by the whims of two very energetic dogs.